


and the dish ran away with the spoon

by dogworldchampion



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Soulmate AU, i'm not kidding about those two names, ok yall it's now on ao3, the Goose AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 11:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13247649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogworldchampion/pseuds/dogworldchampion
Summary: For Terry, it was a falcon. A dark, oversized, absolutely majestic bird landed led him to the farmers’ market, where he bumped into Sharon, also in line to buy locally-sourced honey. For Charles, it was a dog, a mutt that dragged him to an exotic food truck he’d been in search of for almost a year, where Genevieve was doling out Latvian frikadelu zipa. For Gina, it was a panther, large and sleek, that accompanied her to watch a dark, curly mane of hair win a motorcycle race for which her love was the prize.Given these experiences, Jake is fully prepared for a majestic, dignified lone wolf. Obviously, it would be large enough for him to ride like a horse straight to Diamond Point Yacht Club, where a gorgeous speedboat model would be lounging in the sun, her own wolf napping beside her.These expectations are why, when a goose lands in his passenger seat on a mundane overcast Monday morning, Jake’s first emotion is annoyance.





	and the dish ran away with the spoon

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this has been on tumblr (@the-pontiac-bandit) for a while but i'm working on the whole Cross-Posting thing so here ya go ao3. tumblr users startofamoment (who wouldn't let the concept go) and lovelycraters (who sent me the prompt below and also made art for this) are fully and completely responsible for the following ridiculous soulmates au, based on the following prompt: 
> 
> soulmate au where one person finds a goose who leads them to the other person. the difficulty comes in not being mauled by a goose

For Terry, it was a falcon. A dark, oversized, absolutely majestic (at least, according to Terry) bird landed on his windowsill every day for a week, disappearing as he got dressed in the morning, until Sunday morning, when it tapped on his window gently with its beak, asking for entry. It led him to the farmers’ market, where he bumped into Sharon, also in line to buy locally-sourced honey.

For Charles, it was a dog, a mutt who ran up and started humping his leg in the middle of the grocery store. It wasn’t until he’d taken the dog home, when none of his neighbors seemed aware of its presence, that Charles realized that this particular stray was meant to lead him to his soulmate. Twelve days later, on a walk, the dog dragged him to an exotic food truck he’d been in search of for almost a year, where Genevieve was doling out Latvian frikadelu zipa.

For Gina, it was a panther, large and sleek. It twined around her legs for a day, prompting her to frequently and dramatically strut around the precinct, bragging about jeweled collars and fur as smooth and voluminous as her own perfectly-conditioned hair. The squad resisted the urge to point out that none of the rest of them could appreciate the apparent magnificence of the panther – Gina may live her life out loud, but they’d never seen her this transparently happy. That night, the panther accompanied her to watch a dark, curly mane of hair win a motorcycle race for which her love was the prize.

Given these experiences, Jake is fully prepared for a majestic, dignified lone wolf. Obviously, it would be large enough for him to ride like a horse straight to Diamond Point Yacht Club, where a gorgeous speedboat model would be lounging in the sun, her own wolf napping beside her.

These expectations are why, when a goose lands in his passenger seat on a mundane overcast Monday morning, Jake’s first emotion is annoyance.

Cursing his windows, which never close, he tries to shoo the bird away. This is far from his first unwanted avian passenger – pigeons seem to be regularly attracted to the various unhealthy delicacies that sit in his glove console – so he’s become an expert at shooing birds out the window one-handed with his eyes on the road.

Much to his deep annoyance, the goose won’t leave.

That should have tipped him off, he tells everyone later. Terry reminds him that hindsight is 20/20, Gina tells him that any true dazzledove would have known instantly, and all he can think is that he should have gotten more sleep – maybe then he would have put things together quickly enough to make a better decision.

Instead of embracing this goose, who was nuzzling affectionately at his elbow resting on the console, Jake chooses a less advisable course of action. At the stoplight ten blocks from the precinct, he grabs it and dumps it unceremoniously into the bike lane.

He hears its squawks as he drives off, and he spares a moment to be thankful that he won’t have to keep listening to it – the loud, nasal squawks were ruining his already-awful Monday morning.  

It isn’t until he gets in the elevator to head up to work – only ten minutes late today – that he realizes he made a mistake. That’s when the goose reappears, standing next to him. He sees it, notices that not one other cop waiting for the elevator to come has reacted to the very large goose standing in the crowd, and starts to wonder. And then, it bites his ankle –  _hard_ , with a shockingly sharp set of teeth – and he groans aloud.

He’s not at all surprised when the goose hops into his lap before Terry starts the morning briefing. He’s doing his best to ignore this highly unfortunate development – he has no desire  _at all_  to admit to Gina that his wolf (which he’d already named Vendetta) had been replaced by an intrusive, vicious goose. Seeming to sense his thoughts, the goose hops up, beating its wings in his face so hard that he tips his chair backwards. Jake’s indignant shouts and flailing arms, swatting at something no one else can see, as well as the resulting crash when his chair tips backwards, leaving Jake lying on the floor with a goose sitting triumphantly on his chest (who knew geese were this  _heavy_ ) is impossible to ignore. Charles is hovering over Jake, concerned about bruises and broken bones and bruises and brush burns – “They’re no joke, Jakey! You could scar that perfect skin!” – Jake decides to come clean.

“So, my animal may have…dropped in this morning,” he mumbles.

Charles gasps, tears springing to his eyes at the idea that his best friend will finally meet the love of his life.

Terry, from the front of the room whoops. “What is it? Come on – spill! You know Terry loves love!”

Gina, reclining with her feet in a beat cop’s lap and her nose in her phone in the back of the room, looks up. “Oh, goose!” she exclaims.

“Yup, that’s it. Did you guys know geese are the  _worst_?” Jake mutters darkly, unceremoniously dumping the aforementioned goose on the ground as he stands up, brushing off his wrinkled flannel and showing Charles he’s still alive.

“What’s it?” Charles asks, a little confused. “Jakey, do you have a concussion? I didn’t even think to worry about a concussion!”

Charles is trying to make Jake follow his finger as he waves it wildly around Jake’s line of vision, and the chaos is all too much, and the goose is pecking at his toes through his shoes, as if testing to see if they’re edible. It’s  _a lot_  – especially for 9:21 in the morning.

He sighs. This was not how this was supposed to go. “My animal is a goose. A  _really mean_  goose,” he adds with a pointed look at his foot.

Terry smiles affectionately and starts babbling about personalities and animals and birds and the beauty of finding your match, and Charles starts to sob uncontrollably, talking about happiness and futures and the majestic nature of Vendetta the goose (Jake immediately regrets telling Charles the intended name of his wolf. Vendetta the goose sounds much less badass, much to his dismay). Gina just laughs.

Jake shuts his eyes, trying to pretend that the morning isn’t happening. Tragically, the goose, which has flown up to perch uncomfortably on top of his head, isn’t particularly interested in allowing him to forget.

It takes nearly twenty minutes to calm down Charles, with Terry holding him (a few tears leaking out of his own eyes as Charles sobs happily into his shirt, suspenders clutched in both hands). Gina live-tweets the whole thing. Jake wants someone to sink into the floor – whether he’d rather it be him or the goose, he truly isn’t sure.

Jake’s awful morning doesn’t improve as it progresses. Charles, sitting in the desk across from him, keeps staring at him for truly  _weird_  amounts of time, with a starry look in his eyes. He puts Genevieve on speakerphone, where they shout loudly about the beauty of new love over the din of angry Latvian construction workers placing their lunch orders.

Jake doesn’t make it out on any cases. His life has stalled over the appearance of the goose – he can’t concentrate on his cases, and the goose ate his X, H, and A keys while he was at lunch, so his progress on paperwork is slow and riddled with far more spelling errors than usual. Finally, mercifully, his shift ends, and he’s allowed to leave his desk, now covered in goose feathers that only he can see (there are so many feathers he’s convinced the goose  _must_  be pulling them out and putting them there on purpose, but he can’t prove it to anyone else).

Jake directs his car out of the parking lot and onto the street. Then, he pulls the goose onto his lap. “Okay. I can’t ride you, but you’re going to have to show me where this person is  _somehow_. Try driving?”

The goose honks (Jake already hates this noise more than he hates listening to Charles talk about Genevieve’s hair) and grabs the steering wheel with its beak. Briefly, Jake is encouraged. Maybe the goose will drive and Jake can find whatever nerd he’s supposed to end up with ( _seriously, who ends up with a goose as their animal_ , he wonders sourly, pointedly ignoring the fact that he, too, has a goose as his animal). Then, exactly twenty yards into his experiment, the goose jerks the car right, doing his best to run them onto the sidewalk.

Jake slams on the brakes, coming to a screeching halt in the shoulder of the street, mere inches from a very solid-looking mailbox. He mutters a string of curses under his breath as he looks around on the street for another goose, hoping beyond hope that his goose turned right to find his match, rather than out of sheer malice. The lack of other people battling mean geese, as well as the self-satisfied expression on the face of his passenger, suggest otherwise.

Jake repeats the experiment twice more, on side streets where he’s less likely to accidentally hit a pedestrian. First, the goose tries to run him into a lamp post. Then, a giant statue of a teddy bear advertising a nearby toy store. Finally, Jake decides that geese must not be able to drive. When he releases his companion, the goose jumps, flapping his wings in Jake’s face (he gets a smelly mouthful of feathers when he protests) before heading for the passenger seat. For half a second, Jake thinks he’s headed out the still-open window, and his heart leaps. It’s only been eight hours and thirty-nine minutes, but Jake would already commit to a life of solitude where he never found a soulmate if that life lacked geese.

Unfortunately, the goose just lands on the interior door handle, lengthening his neck out the window and sticking his tongue out to catch the breeze like a very white, very feathery, very mean dog. Jake sighs and turns the car around to drive home – if he has to deal with the goose, he at least wants pizza and  _Die Hard_  to help.

Pizza and  _Die Hard_  do help, but only marginally. The goose dives in and licks a full half of the pizza before Jake can even touch it. Much to Jake’s frustration when he tries to feed the goose the spoiled pieces, geese don’t even seem to  _like_  pizza – apparently this particular goose just wanted to spite him. Then, the goose sits on the remote (Jake  _swears_  it’s on purpose) and turns off the TV thirty-eight minutes into the movie. Jake doesn’t really mind having to start it over – the first thirty-eight minutes are eternally rewatchable, but he’s still mad at the goose on principle.

Finally, mercifully, it’s time for bed. Jake manages to save his toothbrush from the goose, who has decided it would be an excellent idea to sit on Jake’s bathroom counter, carefully positioning its rear end over all of Jake’s toiletries. He also manages to save his favorite academy t-shirt from the goose, who grabs it for a game of tug-of-war. He manages to settle the goose in the hallway (an extended process that involves the sacrifice of several old t-shirts for a goose bed and a sprint for his bedroom door, which he locks, breathing hard after the sprint down the hall and hoping beyond hope that magical animals are unable to charm locks open), and he goes to bed, hoping that either his soulmate will be on his doorstep tomorrow or that the goose will be gone – he’d honestly settle for either.

But only thirty minutes after he drifts off to sleep, he wakes up to a loud squawk and a very warm weight on his chest. He groans and turns over, dumping the weight in the process.  For a second, his groggy brain thinks he’s solved the problem. And then, only centimeters from his ear, he hears the loudest  _squawk_  he’s ever heard in his life. He jumps up, startled, and hits his head on a surprisingly hard goose beak. The goose reels back with the impact before nipping Jake’s arm in retaliation. He has never sympathized with the stranglers he puts away before, but he thinks he finally gets it.

While murderous thoughts flood through his brain and he begins to consider asking Charles about the various ways to cook geese, wondering whether magical invisible animal flesh is edible, the goose hops off his bed and runs to the doorframe, looking back at him expectantly.

His first instinct is to bury his head back in his pillow and hope the goose goes back to bed. But then he remembers  _why_  he has a goose squatting in his studio apartment in the first place – is it possible it’s actually trying to be useful? Could it be that his soulmate is walking by outside at this very moment?

Jake is disgusted by the sappiness of the hope running through his brain, but this doesn’t stop him from rushing for his shoes and following the goose out the bedroom and towards the front door, with a quick stop in the hall bathroom to squeeze some toothpaste into his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair is mussed, but he’s sure his soulmate won’t care – surely she’ll just be happy to get rid of the goose, too.

He sprints out the door, the goose nipping at his heels, urging him faster. He stubs his toe  _hard_  against the kitchen counter and bumps his head against the corner of his cabinets as he rounds the corner, but he makes it to the front door in eight seconds flat – a personal record. He slams through the entrance, already turning right to head for the staircase. It’s as he barrels down the hallway that he trips over the goose, wings spread wide and feathers fluffed to look as large as possible. He goes down hard, catching a large mouthful of dirty carpet, and rises to his feet, uttering a long string of curses that he’s sure will wake his neighbors, only to find that the goose is still blocking his path.

When he tries to approach, it squawks at him, all of its sharp teeth on prominent display, so Jake takes a few steps back, hands up. He tries some soothing words, muttering nothings about goose tacos and fried goose and goose sandwich in the most calming voice he knows, but as he takes his fifth step back towards his open apartment door, the goose flaps its way over his head (slapping him in the face with its legs in the process) and slams his door closed.

“Oh,  _God_ , that auto-locks,” Jake groans, his words slurred a little with sleep. He walks over and tries the handle anyway – the goose stands off to the side, watching almost as if it knows the door won’t open, no matter how many times Jake rattles it.

Five minutes of non-stop leaning on the door knob yield no results, and Jake is finally forced to admit that he’s locked out of his apartment in boxers and a t-shirt. His neighbor has a key, but he works a night shift as a hot dog vendor, and his phone is inside, so he can’t call Gina for her spare. So instead, he slides down the wall so that he’s sitting, head on one knee, against the door, hoping against hope that the goose locked him out here because his soulmate is some new girl who moved into the vacant apartment down the hall and will be walking home any minute. His last thought before his eyes fully shut is that a speedboat model better be the one waking him up.

Tragically, the next face he sees is that of Fred, his middle-aged neighbor who lives across the hall, asking him if he’s okay. He mumbles something about automatic locks and broken doors and carpet that smells like mildew, but it isn’t until he adds “…and dumb soulmate geese trying to ruin your life…” that Fred’s face lights up in understanding.

“I’ll go get my key,” he assures Jake quickly before speeding inside.

The sounds of his clumsy neighbor slamming cabinets and rifling through drawers, accented by a colorful string of angry curses, clears Jake’s mind enough for him to sit up, stretching out his cramped limbs and rubbing his eyes, dry and itchy from one of the worst sleeps he can ever remember. That’s when he sees the goose, curled up peacefully like a dog on his welcome mat. He has never hated anything more.

Fred disrupts his reveries about gruesomely bloody water fowl murders by returning with a key, slightly bent but still functional. Jake pushes himself off the ground – with a great deal of effort and several loud (arguably unnecessary) groans – while Fred unlocks the door.

“Well, Jakey, I’ll bring you some hot dogs tonight – you look like you need them. Good luck with your soulmate…did you say  _goose_?”

Jake dives in the door before he has to explain further. _Of course_  the goose is already sitting on the couch, and even though beaks are possibly the least expressive food-holes available, Jake knows it’s grinning at him.

Work doesn’t improve his mood – he goes out with Charles first thing in the morning to check out a crime scene, and it should be simple, but the goose starts moving around critical pieces of evidence, scaring the beat cops who see nothing but floating kitchen utensils in the trashed apartment, and Charles, with tears in his eyes threatening to soak his face, has to tell Jake he should probably wait outside.

Charles also calls the goose Vendetta almost obsessively, as though he’s trying to convince Jake that this goose is somehow better than the wolf Jake’s always dreamed of. Jake calls the goose Quackers. This elicits a fresh round of honks every time he uses it.

In the afternoon, Terry tries to take Jake out to investigate a B&E – a low-stakes call was made about a broken window a few blocks away. The goose spends the car ride using its beak to open and close the windows so much that it breaks the button for the passenger seat. Jake’s a little mad about the repair costs that now fall on him, and very mad that the goose got to be the one to break the window – something he’s wanted to try all his life.

He’s confined to the precinct after that.

The goose seems more interested in eating the Chinese takeout Jake picked up on his way home than it had been in the pizza the night before. Jake’s even hopeful that they’ve reached something of a truce – Jake feeds it the vegetables that always come in his fried rice, no matter how many times he requests carbs and meat only, and it lets Jake eat both fortune cookies.

Jake’s smart enough to know now that when the goose wakes him up - more gently this time - he shouldn’t follow. Part of him - the part that still maintains some iota of optimism - wonders if maybe tonight is the night when Quackers actually  _does his job_ , but the part of him that is maybe now convinced that his bed - lumps and all - is actually probably his soulmate lets his eyes fall all the way shut without a second thought.

He wakes up to the angry beeping of his alarm far too early, and he groans as he slams the snooze button. He could sleep for another ten days, so it’s the easiest decision of his life to slam the snooze button - just once.

Five painfully short snoozes later, the hell-goose, whom he’s forgotten is sleeping at the foot of his bed, stinking up all of his favorite shirts and peppering his blankets with feathers, decides to intervene.

With something vaguely resembling a growl, Quackers lands on his face, batting the side of his head with its wings. Jake lets out a strangled yell, muffled by the feathers that are obstructing his airways, and flails his arms wildly until they make contact with the large goose that is  _definitely_  trying to kill him.

When Quackers goes flying, Jake takes the opportunity to roll over and bury his face in his pillow, which might be suffocating him, but at least it doesn’t smell like bird. He thinks that he’s done it, that Quackers will leave him alone, and then it only takes a few seconds for him to doze off, content in the knowledge that his alarm won’t go off for another nine minutes.

But thirty seconds later, the hell-goose is back stomping ferociously on his back, so hard that the breath is being forced out of his lungs. For a split second, Jake wonders how long he can endure this, if he should just resign himself to the fact that this is the end. That he’s going to be killed by this feathered beast, half goose and half demon, in his own bed. Then the goose shifts, allowing Jake to take a tiny breath in. Jake’s a cop, so he’s had his fair share of near death experiences, had to fight for his life more than once, but he swears that it’s never been as difficult as the fight with this goose. He waves his arms around, angled back towards the goose, rolling to one side to try to throw it off of the side of the bed, feeling its short claws digging into his skin. Somehow, Jake manages to turn and wrestle the goose off of him, finally rolling off of the bed himself, more breathless than he’d care to admit.

He takes a minute to collect himself, glaring at Quackers as he pushes the blankets around the bed, making a nest for himself and perching smugly in the middle (Jake didn’t know that geese could look smug before). Once the goose is settles, Jake briefly considers just climbing back into bed and reclaiming his blankets just to spite Quackers, but then he realises that he may very well be late for work if he doesn’t get dressed right this second. Much to Jake’s dismay, the goose won this round.

Jake’s sure that this particular Wednesday is the day that he’s going to find his soulmate. He’s earned it after a goose-fight that was somehow more exhausting than taking down even Brooklyn’s most hardened criminals. The day finally seems to be going his way - the sun is out, he gets his bagel for free after he accidentally drops it while paying, and no one notices when he’s five minutes late to work, Quackers trotting in behind him. Things seemed to have changed between them since the bedroom fight. Quackers settles at Jake’s feet quite happily for much of the day, with a self-satisfied possessiveness that makes Jake wonder if the goose thinks it’s the alpha.

This school of thought is reinforced when Charles brings in a casserole dish full of vaguely-green paste and orange chunks. With a sigh of resignation, Jake goes for his desk fork and stabs the casserole, steeling his stomach against whatever concoction Charles has brought for him to try.

When the fork, dangling mysterious strings of green, hits his tongue, though, Jake loses it. He spits it all over his keyboard, eyes watering as he rubs his tongue with his hands in a wild attempt to erase the taste from his memory.

“ _Charles_! What  _was_  that?”

Charles looks only mildly concerned. “It’s a grass-and-carrot pâté. You know - for Vendetta!”

Jake blinks twice - both to communicate his confusion and to rid his eyes of the tears that are still forming at the memory of the grassy, overly-spicy taste that reminds him of the time Gina dared him to eat a handful of dirt on a dare. “Charles. You  _know_  that the goose doesn’t deserve a name like Vendetta. It’s Quackers, and it definitely doesn’t deserve  _treats_. And also - why would you let me try it?”

Charles shakes his head, as if he knows something Jake doesn’t. “Jakey, Jakey, Jakey. Sharing food with your animal is a beautiful and natural part of the soulmate process! When Jason and I split his dog treats, it led to an entirely new level of understanding and devotion! It was almost as meaningful as the humping! If you won’t share goose food with Vendetta–”

“ _Quackers_ –” Jake interrupts.

“–then maybe you should try sharing human food! You need to find your soulmate, Jake. We’re all  _waiting_  for her - Genevieve needs a best friend!”

Jake shakes his head at his friend, mumbling thanks and vague words about goose-friendly pizza. Charles looks appeased - even more so when Jake throws in the word  _Vendetta_  - and leaves Jake to bond with Vendet– _Quackers_  over the “intimate joy of shared vertebrate sustenance”.

When Charles leaves on a case thirty minutes later, a very-relieved Jake dumps the entire casserole dish on the floor, leaving Quackers to spend the afternoon licking it up (with a razor-edge tongue that makes Jake withdraw a few inches at the sight of it) while Jake successfully busts two cases of identity theft. He doesn’t, however, successfully find his soulmate, meaning he is still stuck with his vicious modern dinosaur.

He actually likes Quackers marginally better when he thinks of him like this. He may or may not spend an hour training Quackers - who is surprisingly smart, when he wants to be - to stomp around the apartment, wings extended, honk-roaring loud enough to wake Fred across the hall. It only looks marginally like a T-Rex, but Jake will take it.

Quackers never stops doing the walk. When Jake wakes up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, as his third day with the goose wears into his fourth, he trips over a goose silently marching up and down the hall. He does it across Jake and Charles’ shared table at the morning briefing (Charles tears up at the knowledge that the animal responsible for finding his best friend’s  _soulmate_  is here and wrinkling his case files), and he does it through the break room during lunch, stopping to “roar” so loudly in Jake’s ear that he falls out of his chair, much to Gina’s delight.

Quackers continues his march across the bar at Shaw’s that night, when the squad decides to take some of the edge of the week off together. Gina and about a billion of her friends are playing darts across the room, and Charles and Genevieve are sitting in the booth that Jake just vacated, slowly and painstakingly feeding each other fries to analyze the regional origin of the artificial cheese melted on top. Jake’s just looking for another beer (and to maybe collect Quackers, who just broke his fourth wine glass, which is a habit that Jake really can’t afford) when he sees Terry and Sharon sitting at the bar. With Quackers under one arm and a new beer in the other, Jake pauses to watch.

Terry’s got one arm around his wife, and she’s whispering something to him, close to his ear so that he can hear her over the comfortable hum of the regular patrons. He throws back his head, roaring in laughter, and she has to elbow him in the side to remind him to loosen his strong grip. They look so comfortable together that it makes Jake’s heart ache just a tiny bit.

And then Quackers, all but forgotten under his arm, nudges his cheek. It’s light, almost gentle, as though he’s trying to be nice. And Jake remembers, for the first time since a goose started attacking him during a morning briefing four days ago,  _why_  the goose is here. His chest fills with warmth at the thought, and there’s a tingling inside him that has nothing to do with what must be his fourth or fifth beer.  _This_  is why he’s been losing sleep to a malicious goose.

So he calls Captain McGintley (who is slurring far more than Jake is) and gets Friday off.

The next morning, he finds himself in the middle of Prospect Park, with Quackers on a leash in front of him. He gave the goose a solid breakfast (or, rather, Charles did) and sat down and tried to explain what would be happening today. It felt weird - trying to talk to a goose like an adult, and Quackers’ beady eyes were boring into his very essence, but he’s hoping that mutual respect and increased caloric intake will aid his search.

The plan, as Jake explained it, is that Quackers will be allowed to walk on his own - on a leash - and will lead Jake wherever he needs to go to find his mystery woman. Jake’s pretty sure Quackers gets it, and he’s been far more cooperative in the past twelve hours than he had been in the past four days combined. And yet, things go wrong almost immediately.

Quackers struts through the park, and at first, Jake is encouraged. He knows he must look insane to passers-by, with a leash suspended on an invisible animal, but then he sees at least three other morning walkers doing the same, and he decides he must be okay.

And then they come to a small pond, teeming with geese. Jake continues to walk, but Quackers jerks right and dives straight in. The leash is yanked out of Jake’s hand, leaving a  _nasty_  rope burn that will definitely require some hot chocolate from Charles (or maybe from the owner of the matching goose) later. In frustration, as he watches Quackers fraternize with the other normal geese, he kicks the boulder next to his leg.

And immediately lets out a shout of pain because he’s at least 99% sure he just broke all of his toes. He hops on one foot, nearly falling into the pond, and manages to steady himself. His foot is throbbing, and he lets out a string of curses so loud that a mother nearby claps her hands over her toddler’s ears. He removes his shoe - gingerly, carefully - to examine his toe - it might be  _bruised_.

His sneaker - his favorite one (even better than its match, which has a scuff across the toe) - is sitting forgotten on the boulder while he peels off his sock when things go really, truly wrong. All of a sudden, a white blur trailing a blue leash with rainbow pawprints flies by, snatching up the laces of his sneaker in his beak before turning on a dime and flying back out over the small pond, feet skimming the water.

Jake shouts, caught off balance, and spins on the spot, trying to spot Quackers against the too-bright sun while hopping on one foot, his right foot still throbbing as he holds it up. Almost immediately, he lands face-first in the pond, scattering geese and taking several full gulps of algae before he manages to sit up, sputtering.

Quackers is sitting on the boulder Jake just vacated, the most self-satisfied Jake’s ever seen another living thing. He puts down the sneaker, honks loudly at Jake, and struts off, wings out in his best T-Rex strut.

Jake lets out a roar worthy of the best prehistoric reptiles and leaps out of the water, clothes streaming as he sprints after Quackers, who is hopping and flying in between waddles to stay just out of reach. Jake bowls over some teenagers playing hackey sack (the sack itself hits him in the face) and splatters mud on some small girls playing hopscotch as he tries to wipe the pond grime off his face. He rips around corners and through flower bushes (he emerges from one with purple flower petals stuck to the grime on his shirt) and runs headlong into a tree trunk when Quackers stops to take a break on a branch.

Eight minutes later, Jake’s run a decent chunk of the park, all just to retrieve the sneaker. His sprint has slowed to a jog, and he lost the breath to scream insults at his animal several minutes ago. He’s considering giving up on the sneaker - but something about this feels different, and he can’t quite shake the image of Terry and Sharon from last night, so he keeps going.

And then, in the distance, the blue lights of police cars. Jake mutters one final  _shit_  under his breath because for some reason, just for the sake of maximum embarrassment, he knows  _exactly_  where Quackers will take him.

Instead of seeing Charles or Terry or one of the beat cops from the Nine-Nine, like he’s expecting, though, he bowls over a beat cop from the Seven-Eight, a man he’s met a few times before on various joint stakeouts and tactical village events. Before he can stop to apologize, though, Quackers has sped up, heading right towards a white blob Jake can see in the distance.

As he draws closer, he can see that there’s another goose - this one wearing a police badge around its neck and proudly sniffing the perimeter of the crime scene. Next to it is a pantsuit-clad woman with the shiniest hair Jake has ever  _seen_  - the severe bun that contains it is blinding in the bright sunlight.

Jake’s so distracted that he doesn’t notice Quackers stop, doesn’t notice the goose standing in his way, until he’s tripped over it and skidded facefirst through the fresh, soft grass at the feet of Amy Santiago, the legendary detective from the Seven-Eight who kicked the Nine-Nine’s butts at Tactical Village two years ago.

“Are you okay?” she asks, looking more than a little concerned. Only then does Jake remember that he’s covered in mud and flower petals and missing a shoe and lying on his stomach in front of her, jaw hanging open.

“Your…Detective Santiago… _goose_ …” is all he can manage.

“What? You mean Quackson Pollock?” She indicates her goose, but when she turns to see the direction of her pointed finger, she finds her bird not dutifully solving crime but instead nuzzling into the long neck of Quackers.

“Oh.” A blush starts at the tip of her ears and creeps onto her cheeks, darkening her bronze skin. “ _Oh_.”

“Jake Peralta. Detective Jake Peralta. I work in the Nine-Nine.”

Reflexively, she reaches out to shake his hand. Her grip is firm, and he’s tempted to tease her about it, but there’ll be time - there’ll be  _years_  for that. So instead, he lets his hand linger, noticing the calluses that line her palm before looking up to see laughter in her eyes at his appearance. “I…I know you,” she says slowly, her eyes lighting up in recognition. “Coolest kill last year, right?”

“Yeah, sorry…Quackers took me on a bit of a wild goose chase.” He tries the pun, and is relieved to hear her small chuckle in response. He wonders what it would take to make her really laugh.

“You know geese are really smart, right? I’ve had Quackson Pollock working as a scent hound all week. Most cases I’ve ever solved.”

She sounds so seriously proud that Jake has to smile in response as he replies. “Bet you can’t beat my record.”

A competitive gleam lights up in her eyes. “Loser buys the coffee?”

“Good thing it’s gonna be you because I  _definitely_  lost my wallet in some flower bushes back on the south end of the park.”

She picks at one of the petals decorating his sleeves. “It’s a good look.” All of a sudden, she’s a little bit shy, and Jake gets it. His heart’s been threatening to jump through his throat and land at his feet at the sight of her warm, brown eyes.

“So, coffee?” she asks, breaking the silence. On Jake’s left, a white blur passes by, dropping a sneaker on top of his shoulder and affectionately batting his head with one wing before flying off.

“Coffee sounds great,” he replies, with a small pang of affection for Quackers and a great deal of nervous excitement as he watches Amy pass off the case to her secondary with more authority and poise than he could muster even in his John-McClane-daydreams.

“Time for a shower, though?” she asks, appraising his still-dripping clothes as they walk away.

“Title of your sex tape!” he shouts on impulse. And then, as he blushes, she laughs  _for realz_  and he decides immediately that this is a sound he never wants to stop hearing.


End file.
